‘I Felt Violated,’ Says Victim of Wrestlers’ Hazing

Westlake High School wrestlers engaged in a pattern of hazing and intimidation that included grabbing students, pinning them down and probing their buttocks with a broomstick dubbed “Pedro,” sheriff’s officials said Monday.

Committed by a handful of wrestlers, but witnessed by many, the incidents took place at the school between Sept. 8 and Dec. 8, but did not result in any physical injuries, according to Sgt. Rod Mendoza of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

“The motive was hazing,” Mendoza said late Monday. “The motive was the strong against the weak. Teasing. Harassing. Kids can be cruel sometimes.”

Investigators have not yet decided whether to file charges, but at most would consider misdemeanor charges of assault and battery, he added.

The investigators believe that all 27 wrestlers were at least aware of, if not participants in, the ritual, Mendoza said.

At least one girl, one wrestler and one boy not on the team were subjected to the hazing, but incidents could total as many as six, Mendoza said. While the girl was pinned to a wrestling mat in a gym mezzanine area, a wrestler intervened before she was prodded with the stick of a dry mop, he said.

One boy said eight to 10 boys, not all of them wrestlers, pinned him down on the mat one afternoon after team practice and poked the mop handle at his buttocks.

“I thought it was an initiation, but it went farther than that. . . . I was embarrassed,” he said. “I felt violated.”

The victim said he did not consider the act criminal but rather a joke that had gotten out of hand.

Despite their suggestive nature, the incidents are not believed to have been sexual, Mendoza added.

“The alleged crimes are not sexual in nature at this time,” he said. “In order for them to be sexual in nature, the . . . suspect has to get sexual arousal out of it. That cannot be proven.”

Sheriff’s investigators have spent five straight days at the suburban campus, questioning wrestlers and administrators about the incidents, which prompted school officials to abruptly cancel the wrestling season last week.

School administrators are still considering in-house punishment--such as suspensions or expulsions--but they will wait until the police investigation is completed, Athletic Director Joseph Pawlick said Monday.

By late Monday night, no charges had been filed, but sheriff’s officials were seeking to speak with anyone who knew anything about hazing occurrences.

“If anything, the charges would be misdemeanor assault and battery,” Mendoza said. “Only a handful supposedly took part in this. They would grab people as hazing, then hold them down and probe them in the buttocks with a broomstick.”

The victims were fully clothed at the time.

If charged and convicted, someone committing misdemeanor assault and battery can face punishment ranging from a fine or community service to a year in jail--which would be “extreme,” Mendoza said.

Wrestlers and administrators have cooperated fully with the investigation, which is somewhat hampered by the school’s winter break, Mendoza added.

“There’s no code of silence,” he said. “People are telling what they know.”

School officials have said repeatedly that they will not tolerate “unethical student athlete behavior.”

The news surprised booster Wendy Margolis, one of a group of parents who are seeking to have the innocent wrestlers reinstated to the team.

“If all this was going on, then the people who participated should be punished,” Margolis said. “The people who witnessed it and didn’t say anything should be counseled. . . . This is unfortunate because it’s not just the wrestling team.”

The police accounts jibe with those of one wrestler who spoke out Monday.

“No one was ever hurt,” said the youth who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I think it was a joke that went way too far. . . . Maybe someone should have stopped it, but no one ever knew it was so bad.”

The wrestler said he had not participated in, but had witnessed part of one hazing episode. He also heard teammates’ accounts of two other instances targeting students who were not part of the wrestling team.

He said the stick, nicknamed “Pedro,” had become an unofficial team mascot and that the conduct was harmless, albeit tasteless, horseplay.

Others saw it differently, with school administrators describing the hazing as “gross team misconduct” and some parents characterizing it as a simulated sex act.

To the best of the student’s knowledge, three incidents occurred involving, respectively, a basketball player, another wrestler and a student not involved in athletics.

The story, confirmed by another wrestler who did not witness the hazing, is this:

A small, intimate bunch of the wrestlers never cared much for Westlake’s mascot--the Warrior. So they took an object they saw at practice every day--a dry mop used to clean their dirty wrestling mat--and made it their mascot. They named it Pedro and took it along to meets. When the team won the meets, Pedro became exalted.

“It was our lucky broomstick,” said team co-captain Dan Margolis, who said he did not participate in or witness the hazing. “We would joke about Pedro being our leader. We’d tell people that Pedro was 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds. . . . Some kids said they wanted to beat Pedro up.”

Soon the team members renamed a wrestling move called the “oil change”--which involves grabbing an opponent from behind by the inner thigh to flatten him on the mat for two points--the “Pedro.”

On at least one occasion, a teammate “got Pedro-ed,” said the anonymous wrestler. “He was basically held down while someone poked a broomstick at his butt.”

The incident took place during an unsupervised period--about 30 to 45 minutes after school lets out for the day--before the coach arrives at 3.

But the wrestler said that there was no penetration and that no one was upset.

“I think they just did it as a joke, because he was the first one in that day,” he said. “I think maybe his parents are upset, because he isn’t. He stayed on the team and wore his wrestling jacket to school. No one bothers him or tells him what to do.”

On another occasion earlier this fall, a basketball player was reportedly chased in the gym by a wrestler wielding Pedro, the wrestler continued. A third incident apparently involved one wrestler starting to carry another student up a hill behind the gym, only to be stopped by a teacher.

The investigation at Westlake High School could be a Ventura County first, the Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

“It’s the first time we’ve investigated a whole team--the wrestling team--as possibly being involved in a crime as a whole,” Mendoza said. “We’ve never investigated a football team as a whole. Or a baseball team. Or a basketball team.”

The length of the investigation and the winter break have left parents of wrestlers in the lurch, said Wendy Margolis, Dan’s mother and the booster club president.

“We’re all caught between a rock and a hard place because school is out,” she said on Monday. “We’re in a major holding pattern here.”

Come Monday, Margolis and other parents of wrestlers will meet to draft letters to the school officials and officials of the Conejo Valley Unified School District demanding that innocent wrestlers be allowed to finish the season.

Kate Folmar is a Times staff writer and Lisa Fernandez is a correspondent.